Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to encoding of video signals and more particularly to motion search for encoding of video signals.
Description of the Related Art
In many electronic devices, video information is encoded to reduce the size of the information and thus reducing the resources required to communicate or store the video information. The encoded video information is typically decoded before it is displayed. To ensure reliable communication of video information between different electronic devices, standards have been promulgated for many encoding methods including the H.264 standard that is also referred to as MPEG-4, part 10 or Advanced Video Coding, (AVC). The processing of video information, including the encoding thereof, frequently requires the generation of motion vectors based on comparisons between pictures embedded in the video information. Because the number of comparisons can put a severe strain on memory bandwidth and other device resources, the pictures are typically downscaled prior to generating the motion vectors. However, such downscaling can reduce the precision of the motion vector generation, thereby reducing the accuracy of the encoding or other video processing.